A 1.4 MW rooftop array at the Charka Steel fabrication plant came online this month, covering the site's daytime load and taking two standby diesel generators out of regular service.
Structural steel fabrication is not an obvious candidate for solar. The load is heavy, it is spiky, and it does not politely follow the sun. The engineering work was less about the panels than about the plant: shifting the heaviest rolling and cutting operations into daylight hours, and installing storage to hold the line through cloud cover without dropping to the generators.
What changed on the floor
- Daytime grid draw down by roughly two thirds against the 2024 average.
- Diesel consumption at the site down 78% — the generators are now genuine standby rather than daily plant.
- Scheduling rebuilt around a solar day, with the heaviest operations between 09:00 and 15:00.
Innovation is the only way to succeed. On a rolling line that mostly means asking why a machine runs at the hour it runs, and being willing to change the answer.
The array is the second of the three sites named in the group's 2028 renewable commitment. The Panchagarh estate is already running; the remaining Meena Bazar distribution centre is scheduled for next year. Together they take the group past four megawatts of installed solar.
The payback on the installation is projected at just under six years at current tariffs. The emissions figure will be reported in the annual disclosure against the verified 2024 baseline, not against an estimate.